The present invention relates to a method of intelligently presenting relevant websites to a computer user who is interested in retrieving information from the internet.
In an increasingly networked world, computer users frequently use online resources to access information. For example, search engines are a popular tool through which computer users enter a search query describing information of interest and receive back documents or links to documents that relate to the search query. Search engines may be tailored to a particular area of interest, such as a general web search engine, a news search engine, or a shopping search engine.
When a user requests information from Internet resources such as the World Wide Web, the computer user's browsing experience may be personalized in accordance with certain characteristics, preferences and interests (for example), which are peculiar to the computer user. Such characteristics, preferences and interests may be stored in a user profile.
Of particular interest to many computer users today are social networking websites which focus on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Social networking has created new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites have information that you have posted about yourself and your activities and interests or that others have posted about you. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people, and it now seems that social networking will be an enduring part of everyday life. Popular social networking sites include MySpace and Facebook but social networking sites also include applications for business, medical and the social good.
Social networking services allow users to create a profile for themselves which can be shared with other like-minded users.
An important part of internet searching are metatags (sometimes also called just “tags”), often invisible to the casual computer user, which are keywords or terms assigned to a piece of information and allow it to be found on the internet by browsing or searching.
McCullough U.S. Pat. No. 7,251,687, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses building a profile of a computer user based on the websites (network addresses) accessed by the computer user and then comparing these network addresses to addresses in a second profile. If there is a strong match, an assumption is made that the other accessed addresses in the second profile apply to the computer user as well. Categorization of the websites is also provided and the categorization may be in the form of meta tags.
Tran U.S. Patent Application Publication 2007/0208719, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses intellectual property document management wherein search results over a network relating to an intellectual property interest are provided to a user based on an associated user profile and documents are identified as those having a tag (meta tag or user-generated tag) responsive to the intellectual property interest.
Bennett U.S. Patent Application Publication 2007/0078958, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses characterizing a website by the use of tags and then intelligently predicting a profile of user traffic at the website.
Tee et al. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2006/0020646, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses the management of data over a network that provides an intelligent file system that uses user profiles, policies and meta-data to manipulate the storage of information.
Chalong U.S. Patent Application Publication 2003/0014274, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein, discloses the use of a user profile to perform searching requests in accordance with profile tags that are generated to locate user preference information within the search.
However, there remains the need to have a richer experience from social networking websites and other websites related thereto.